Help with text and keyboard shortcuts

Posted 11 November 2012 - 05:17 PM

I feel a bit silly asking this simple question in such a highly technical forum - and I hope this is the appropriate sub-forum to ask it (mods, feel free to move this if there is a better place ).

In Windows, there is a keyboard shortcut that I use a lot when typing documents or even in writing on web forums - Alt+<- (left-arrow), which moves the cursor back by whole words. It's handy to skip large portions of text to move the cursor back instead of just holding the left arrow down until you get where you want to be. But as many of you know, Alt+<- on a Mac changes the desktop (or opens some other feature - I haven't figured out what it is yet ). So I'm wondering what Mac keyboard shortcut does what I need (skipping back through text one word at a time instead of one character at a time).